Mat on Macs

So to get the Home Server Project started I obviously needed the server. At first I thought about going with a Linux server running on an old Athlon PC I happened to have from the bad old days from before I saw the Mac light. However, after playing around a bit with Ubuntu I decided to just go with what I know–OS X. Now ideally I would be running OS X Server, but I’m not willing to drop $200+ on the project so I’ll just have to go with a regular client version of OS X which nonetheless has a lot of server features available, and which can of course be upgraded with lots of open source server tools. Since I’m doing this project on a shoestring budget I was wondering what sort of Mac I could get for $100 or less. Some eBay searching revealed that 500-600 GHz G3 iMacs were generally going for about $150 and I didn’t want to pay that much. As luck would have it, however, I found a 400 MHz graphite iMac DV SE without a hard drive, but with 512MB of RAM for $68. The RAM was important because OS X is very memory hungry and I didn’t really want to buy it (in fact, at Crucial.com a 512MB stick for this machine runs about $100). Anyway, I bought the iMac and it was delivered a few days later–with shipping it totaled about $100.

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I fear that I’m afflicted with a terrible disease whose name I’ve just discovered. While browsing the smoothwall.org community I saw someone else noting that he was also afflicted with this disease and he gave its name. We are both suffering from the “fix it till it’s broke” syndrome. Just can’t stop; if it’s there to be mucked with… well ya just gotta. So my latest project: a home server. Here’s the plan:

What the image shows (click for larger version) is my planned home network. I recently purchased an old graphite G3 iMac DV SE (more details in a subsequent post) to be the home server itself. I’m planning to do several things with the server including running it as:

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Most of the time when I’m playing videos I’m also futzing around with other stuff at the same time so I often do not use Frontrow (as I’m typing this post I’ve got a movie going). Anyways, I’m playing a DVD full screen on my main monitor with DVD Player and it occurs to me: I wonder if the iMac remote works with DVD player. Well, hot damn, it does! Play/pause, chapter forward/back, 4x fast forward/back (hold buttons down) all work. In fact, the play/pause button works on the DVD Player app even if some other program like Safari is in the foreground. (The menu button, however, does not bring up the DVD menu, but Frontrow). What about Quicktime Player? Yep, that one works too (play/pause, scan forward/back). When something besides Frontrow is running, the volume up/down buttons on the remote adjust the system volume. In short, this thing does more than I realized, but exactly what one would expect–isn’t that more or less what makes the Mac different? Well done Apple!

[update: TUAW has linked to this post (Thanks!) and in the comments there you find out that the remote does even more things–control iTunes, put the machine to sleep, etc. Cool!]

I was recently looking for some Macintosh posters to decorate my office and perhaps one of the sort of mousepads that you see in Apple showrooms, but I’ve had a heck of a time finding any. I’ve never understood Apple’s unwillingness to sell officially licensed accessories. While you can find a few Apple memorabilia type items at places like The Missing Byte, it is quite hard to find any number of things one might like to have. Apple tends to engender the kind of loyalty that would lead to a lot of sales of mousepads, shirts, etc. Apple owns one of the most valuable brands in the world, and while I can understand their desire to keep it somewhat exclusive, it seems patently foolish to forgo a lucrative market which is pure profit. Other exclusive brands don’t seem to mind. So what gives? Why doesn’t Apple what my money?

One of the first problems I ran into was playing downloaded videos on BONAVENTURE. This is really annoying as Divx for Mac 6 (PPC) had just been released a few days before and I was justing getting used to using it to play divx and xvid content in the Quicktime Player. Fortunately, the Divx people are on the ball and have already released a Intel beta. I’ve downloaded it and it seems to be running quite well. It has played most of the files I’ve thrown at it so far, but still chokes on certain xvids. [update: There’s a divide by zero error caused, evidently, by malformed AVI headers. Supposedly it’s already fixed internally, so I assume they’ll kick it out with the next beta. For now, though, my only recourse has been MPlayerOSX (see below)]

Before the Divx release I was using the excellent open source video player VLC, but it just wasn’t cutting it through Rosetta. And from what I could tell from the forums it might be a while before the Intel native binary is released. A few sites list an Intel binary from last year, which I had to google to find, but even when I did I was unable to make it work properly (all the blacks appeared green). [update: Someone suggested to me in an email comment that I should try one of the nightly Intel builds found here. I just tried the Feb 21st nightly build and it’s finally working! Huzzah!]

After assiduous searching I found that an Intel binary of MPlayerOSX (download) had been released that would in fact play the xvid that was acting up. I never really liked MPlayerOSX (which come from the Linux world and looks it). I found the PPC version to be much less capable (and attractive) than VLC, but I’ll take what I can get as long as my content playing. So I would recommend first trying the Divx codec in Quicktime and if that doesn’t work try MPlayerOSX.

[update: sadly the story on Windows Media support isn’t as good. Ironically, Microsoft announced that it was stopping development of the unlamented Windows Media Player for the Mac and instead would be giving away flip4mac’s WMV codec for QT Player at MWSF, but unfortunately they’ve indicated that it’s not yet Intel compatible and there’s no ETA.]

As I mentioned before, my previous computer is a G4Powerbook. I was previously using the mac version of the open source, cross-platform virtual keyboard and mouse sharing software SynergyKM to share my desktop keyboard and mouse with my notebook (in fact I still use Synergy at work where the server is a PC). While there is a universal binary out, I was having some trouble with it so I turned to a Mac only alternative called teleport. As you can see below you arrange the machines’ desktop so that it matches the actual physical layout of your computers. When you move the mouse to the edge of the screen it automatically jumps over–including copying the clipboard. A bezel appears on the server mac indicating that the mouse and keyboard are controlling the other machine. In short, teleport “just works” and is a much more mac-like program.

So now I can control Clare with my preferred Logitech MX 1000 and Macally Icekey and I can have a threeway! Highly recommended.

Even with Apple’s Rosetta realtime translation technology, the biggest problem with running an Intel iMac is obviously software incompatibility (it seems like almost every prefpane has to be updated). So I’ve been scouring the net for applications. Versiontracker and Macupdate have pages up. But in addition I’ve found some other good resources for (mostly open source) binaries compiled for x86 processors (from back in the say). I’ll be making posts about Universal Binaries in the coming days, but for you early adopters check out especially: Macrumors and OSX86 Project. I’ve also found various unreleased alphas and betas by contacting authors and searching forums.

Apple’s Migration Assistant is a great idea; get a new Mac, put your old Mac in Firewire Disk Mode, and seamlessly transfer all your files and settings. What could be wrong with that? Well if your new mac is an Intel Mac and your old mac is not, then you may have some problems. I of course didn’t think about this; so I merrily transferred everything over and started BONAVENTURE. Well he didn’t like that one bit. CLARE, my Powerbook from which I was transferring everything, of course had tons of login items and prefpanes which ended up being incompatible with the Intel iMac. After some cursing and forced restarts I managed to get rid of most of the incompatible software. However, if I were doing it again I just copy over my files manually (Home folder, Applications folder, and a some items from /Library).

Here he is, my new 17″ Intel iMac which I’ve named BONAVENTURE. He’s pretty much straight out of the box except for one obvious addition–the Dell 2005FPW, 20″ widescreen LCD running in extended desktop mode (no Dell haters please; I got this display for more than $400 less than the equivalent ACD and have been very pleased with it). This required purchasing the mini-DVI to DVI adaptor (originally made for the 12″ Powerbook). One surprising thing I noticed is how much better the Dell looks than the built-in 17″ LCD on the iMac. I adjusted the color settings and that improved things a but, but side-by-side there’s really no comparison; the Dell is much nicer looking (interestingly, the actual LCD panel inside the Dell is apparently the same one as the 20″ iMac and 20″ Cinema Display, so I assume those screens would also look much better than the 17″).

The main problem with this iMac out of the box is that (at 512MB), it’s memory starved. That makes switching between applications quite tiresome, so much so in fact that I’m making this post from my 15″ Powerbook G4. I have already ordered more RAM from Data Memory Systems but they haven’t even gotten their stock in yet (hopefully I’ll get my part next week). I had a good experience with Datamem in the past and their price was very good; I just hope they can deliver soon, because I really need it.

The iMac uses a DDR2 PC2-5300 SODIMM which are evidently new enough that they’re hard to find. My normal preferred supplier Newegg doesn’t even list that part in their database. I find it rather annoying that Apple chose to use SODIMMs (i.e. notebook memory) in the new iMacs, which of course makes it cost more than the corresponding desktop size DIMMs

[update: I installed the new 1GB stick and it makes all the difference in the world! Running a new iMac without at least 1GB just isn’t going to cut it]

It’s true that the world is not wanting for Mac blogs, many written by much more knowledgeable folks than I. Nonetheless, I thought it’s be worth doing this, partly for my own enjoyment, but also to track the beginning of the Intel Mac era, because I am indeed writing this post on a 17″ Intel iMac. I’ll be posting about my experiences with my new iMac, including the pitfalls that come with being an early-adopter. I hope I might also be a source of information for others looking to get going on a new Intel Mac.